1. Technical Field
The present application relates generally to an improved duty cycle measurement apparatus and method. More specifically, the present application is directed to an inexpensive absolute duty cycle measurement method and apparatus which does not require large additional hardware, is amendable to large throughput, and is useful for applications in manufacturing environments.
2. Description of Related Art
Conventional clock signal generator circuits allow the designer to vary the duty cycle of a clock signal that the circuit produces. During a clock period, a clock signal exhibits a logic high for a portion of the period and a logic low for the remainder of the period. Duty cycle refers to the percentage of a clock period that the clock signal exhibits a particular logic state (e.g., a logic high state). A signal that exhibits a logic high state for 50% of the signal period corresponds to a 50% duty cycle. Similarly, a signal that exhibits a logic high state for 40% of a signal period corresponds to a 40% duty cycle. Of course, the designer may alternatively employ inverted logic and define the duty cycle in terms of the percentage of a signal period that the signal exhibits a logic low state.
At relatively low frequencies up to and including the MHz range, it is not difficult to measure incremental changes or adjustments to the duty cycle of a digital signal. However, when dealing with clock circuits in the GHz range, the designer experiences significantly more difficulty in measuring small changes in the duty cycle of a digital signal. In terms of time instead of frequency, incremental adjustments to the clock duty cycle or pulse duration in the picosecond range are very difficult to measure.
One solution for measuring changes to the duty cycle of a clock signal in the picosecond range is a high speed oscilloscope with very large bandwidth. Unfortunately, a laboratory setup with a multi-GHz scope is expensive to implement and maintain. Moreover, care must be taken to assure that whatever circuitry couples the clock signal from a logic chip to the scope does not introduce jitter exceeding the duration of the incremental adjustment to the duty cycle.
Another approach to measuring changes to the duty cycle of a clock signal on an integrated circuit (IC) is picosecond imaging circuit analysis (PICA). The PICA method detects photons of light emitted on the leading and trailing edges of clock pulses to determine their duty cycle. While this type of duty cycle analysis works well, it is extremely expensive to implement. Moreover, this type of analysis destroys the component under test.
The most popular way to extract absolute duty cycle is by driving the signal through a low pass filter. The output of the low pass filter will have a value that is representative of the duty cycle of the input signal. However, implementation of the low pass filter requires a large resistor and capacitor. This adds to the overall chip size.